let's ask our political panel, lady lynn is chief executive of the holding company, el rothschild, a democratic strategist and douglas is president of the american action forum and former director of the congressional budget office. i guess that means you know how to crunch numbers. lot of number crunching going on last night. but in the end, maybe you didn't really need to crunch them so much, douglas, because obama won pretty easily. >> it is one of the remarkable things that the end, the race looked like it looked a year ago, despite all the campaigning and money spent, that the polls going in were reflective of what came out. the only thing that happened was that for a month in between, there were hopes raised on the republican side because the momentum that appeared to gather hyped mitt romney. in the end, i think the president gets credit for a tremendous tactical victory. this was really a ground game in turning his voters out to the polls. it doesn't look like an whoever whelming governing mandate. >> gretchen: how does a republican, many people are going to ask -- lose again